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The Toronto-Ottawa series has been a case of quantity over quality since the lockout, 45 games with often nothing more than local pride at stake.

But a Battle of Ontario with playoff overtones for both teams? With Ottawa coming from nowhere to challenge for the division lead? That’s one spicy meatball.

Since a March 8, 2007 match, with Ottawa fourth and Toronto eighth, talk of playoffs and possible rematches have rarely entered the equation. The teams last had a post-season date in 2004, a seven-game series that was Toronto’s most recent playoff victory.

“This game is going to be huge,” said Leafw winger Clarke MacArthur, looking to Tuesday’s match at the Air Canada Centre. “They must be playing some good system hockey there. They have a hot goalie (Craig Anderson) and they’ll be a disciplined team.

“They’re a team that was obviously a long shot at the start of the year, but it just shows you that if you work hard, you play your systems (it pays off). They’re a dangerous hockey team so we have to be ready.”

That wasn’t quite the case for Toronto on Saturday against the Rangers, who took full advantage of the Leafs playing the night before and wore them down early. MacArthur sees Tuesday unfolding along the same strategic lines for both clubs.

“It’s more like a chess game against these kind of teams,” he said. “You have to be ready to capitalize.” While the Leafs took Sunday off to reflect on losing two bellwether games, in Buffalo against the die-hard Sabres and then the first-place Rangers, the Sens celebrated a 3-2 shootout win over Montreal. It brought them to 4-0 and ended a three-game road trip that put them four games over .500.

“We’re just going to be short-sighted,” forward Jason Spezza cautioned of a six-game jaunt that starts at the ACC. “We knew this Eastern part was going to be tough with some tough buildings (Pittsburgh, New York and Montreal), but to get six points is a big accomplishment.”

As has been constantly brought up, all six meetings in this edition of the Toronto-Ottawa set are predicated on the Sens having to play the night before, They will be home to the Winnipeg Jets on Monday. But that is the least of the obstacles they’ve overcome so far in 2011-12.

With most picking them to come 10th or lower, Paul MacLean has injected some personality behind the Senators’ bench. The conservative Cory Clouston seemed to suck the spirit out during his two-and-a-half year term that saw Ottawa make the playoffs once.

Spezza, once seen as part of the problem in Bytown when the team couldn’t seem to reach full potential in its Cup-calibre years, is on a point-a-game pace. He’s healthy, in the top 10 of NHL scoring and could reach his career high of 92 points from 2007-08, the year after he led the playoffs with 15 assists and 22 points.

“(General manager) Bryan Murray decided to tear things down and start from scratch,” Spezza told the Toronto Sun in the summer. “Sometimes you have to do that. If you look at the success some of the (recent Cup-winning teams) have had, you have to build your own players, have young guys coming up and you add later on.

“I don’t think we’re in the same position of some of those teams where you have to hit rock bottom. Hopefully, last year was as bad as it gets for us. We still have some talented veterans (Chris Phillips, Filip Kuba and Sergei Gonchar have all rebounded this season) and good young guys, that we can probably become a better team.”

Erik Karlsson leads all league blueliners with 44 points, in more than 25 minutes of action per night. His next point ties last year’s total and he eventually could be the first Norris Trophy winner on a Canadian team since Chris Chelios with the Habs in 1989.

But goaltending is the true strength of any team and the 31-year-old Anderson seems to have struck it rich with his fourth team. He preserved the shootout win over Montreal by stopping Max Pacioretty, who had scored in the last minute to force overtime.